


The world and its heroes

by WatchforWitches



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Good Parent Maryse Lightwood, Hurt Alec, Husbands, Immortality Issues (Shadowhunter Chronicles), Introspection, M/M, Supportive Magnus Bane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 02:16:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19416415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchforWitches/pseuds/WatchforWitches
Summary: "The world needs him," Maryse says it quietly, the words echoing in Magnus as he watches this mother stroke her son's hair. This unlikely woman and her unlikely heart."Damn the world," Magnus replies, voice exhausted and roughAlec is unconscious and Magnus laments on how important his husband is.Based on a poem I saw on Tumblr





	The world and its heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Whoa, another introspective piece, who would have guessed?? It's blissfully easy for me to ramble on and on about these two and their love. And with all the cast being together again for fhe cons, it's making me miss my boys something fierce. 
> 
> I'm working on a fake datinv au, but in the meantime, here's this.

"The world needs him," Maryse says it quietly, the words echoing in Magnus as he watches this mother stroke her son's hair. This unlikely woman and her unlikely heart.

"Damn the world," Magnus replies, voice exhausted and rough. He'd been sitting at his husband's bedside all day, he did not care much for the world. "The world never deserved him. He works too hard for it."

Magnus feels the spiteful words in his throat, knows how easy it would be for them to come out of his mouth. That the world Alec was raised in barely cared about him before he was declared someone of importance. That the world that is cruel to him, that takes pieces of him away everyday, does little for Alec in return. That Alec's own people would have turned their back on him had he not been a Lightwood, had he been born someone else.

But he looks at Maryse and sees the pain and the hurt and the exhaustion and he just stops. He's said what he has needed to anyways, the rest left between the pauses, between the words he didn't say.

"I need him," Magnus tells her, and he can hardly recognize his own voice in all it's fragility.

Something in Maryse's eyes softens ever so slightly, and before Magnus can blink she's moving. She moves to his side of Alec's infirmary bed and carefully runs a hand through his loose strands of hair. "Oh Magnus," she sighs, breath full of sadness and pity, "You have him."

He turns his face up towards her and looks at this woman he knows. Maryse Lightwood is, as always recently, a pleasant surprise. Continually she surpasses what Magnus ever could have expected from her. Where an enemy once stood, an ally was created. Where a woman full of hatred and anger had been, a careful calm loving mother now stood. Magnus had long been disconnected at the idea of a mother, the concept of someone loving and caring for him in the honest and truthful way that mothers loved their son's. But despite everything he could have counted on, Maryse had seen the empty place a mother's life had once been, and eagerly pressed into it, filling it with an eagerness that staggered him to his very core most days. "Thank you," he replies, voice thick and lashes lined with unshed tears.

Leaning down, she presses a kiss to his temple. A woman who once would have held a blade to his throat. He closed his eyes, grateful for this small gesture that speaks volumes. "It's late, I'm going to go. But I'll be back tomorrow, let me know if you need anything, or if anything changes. You have my number."

In a flourish, Maryse Lightwood leaves the infirmary, wrapped up in a thick jacket for the biting New York wind. Magnus realizes with a start that he could have portaled her, if she had wanted, realized he could have asked. He looks at Alec, unconscious but beautiful, and forgives himself for his small impoliteness.

Taking over where Maryse had stopped, Magnus cards his fingers through Alec's thick hair, humming all the while. It's an old spanish lullaby he would sometimes sing at night, one that could coax even Alec to sleep. He hopes he hears it now, and dreams well.

The world didn't need him. The world wanted from him, in a selfish way that ripped Magnus apart some days. The world beat him down and asked for more and Alec gave it because he was the best man in the world.

Magnus watched Alec sleep, happy that the moments of pain crossing over his features had long since stopped. He was a warrior even now, unguarded and small, but still ever piece a man built for war.

The world ready had it's heroes. The angels had already made all they would need. He strained everyday watching Alec take on the weight of a world he was never meant to bare. The world had its Atlas, and the burden of this wasn't Alec's to shoulder, despite what his runes or stubbornness or past might say.

Magnus gasped his hand tighter and sent off a prayer into the universe. Please, he thought, bring him back to me. The world has it's heroes, but he's mine and I need him back. Let him come back to me, soft and happy and unburdened. He deserves ever second of his life, and now is not his time.

"Come back to me my love," Magnus whispered softly into the darkness, hand still grasping Alec's. "Please?"

Despite his asking, Alec's eyes remain closed. The soft movements of the heart monitor the only indicator that he was still alive at all. He looked peacefully still, preserved here, always like this, always this young. Whenever Magnus dared to imagine Alec as old, perhaps with thinning grey hair and laugh lines across his mouth, he knows he will love it. As much as Alec growing old is a sore spot for them, a bruise that will never heal right, he knows that he will delight in carding his hands in Alec's hair and commenting on the grey, on running a hand over his stiff back and offering him the cooling comfort of magic to ease the pains of age.

But watching him sleep now, it feels like a different lifetime. He traces the runes on his husbands arms and cannot will himself to imagine him any older than he is right now. He just needs to wake up, and Magnus will see the youthfulness in those blue eyes, and something inside him will settle, the way it always does. "You know, you're being very stubborn love. Although, what else should I really expect at this point. I did marry a Lightwood after all. It's really my own fault."

The Lightwoods and their goddamn martyr complexes, always giving Magnus a headache. Always worrying him. Magnus knew Alec always did better when he thought that others and their safety, their happiness, was om the line.

_That doesn't make any piece of him theirs_ he thinks now, tired, with Maryse's words playing on a loop in his head. He knew that being with Alec was an easier choice back all those years ago, easier than not pursuing him, easier to fight off this young man's demons with him, than to abandon him to the idea that he deserved them all along. Magnus spent so long teaching Alec that he was not wrong, that what he wanted was not only okay, but more than easily attained. Alec had grown up with a shield around his heart that Magnus had so carefully helped him lower.

And the he owed the world nothing for what they did to him. He was important, smart and brave and loyal, and he was needed by many people, but by no one more than Magnus. If he had to count the number of times he watched Alec nearly burn with the idea that he could be doing more, he would never stop counting.

Alec was always going to be the martyr that Magnus wasn't ready to lose.

He was always going to mean more to the world than he ever knew. Magnus kisses his rough knuckles, and resigns to this too. "Forget the world" he whispers to his unpredicted love, "I need you most."

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! Please leave kudos and comments if you so desire, and have a beautiful day!


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